First Love
by jw77
Summary: Who hasn't run into an ex...and had absolutely no idea what to say? An exchange between Katniss' mom and Peeta's dad, during HG


FIRST LOVE

You answer the door at dusk carrying a fistful of chamomile leaves, and it's him: Timmot Mellark.

"Oh..."

He's looking at the ground, not meeting your eyes, although he's just knocked on your door for the first time in 24 years. His hands, broad and strong, are pale and dusty with flour, just as you remember. He's carrying a small paper sack.

You're opening your mouth to invite him in when the kettle whistles behind you, and you remember the tea and turn, flustered. You lift the kettle off the stove and turn back to the door, and he's still there, studying the toes of his boots.

He must have seen the broadcast, today. He and his wife. Their two older boys. Heard their youngest child expose their most taboo of family secrets for all the country to hear. That his father first wanted to marry another. You.

You've heard people say much worse than that, dying of fever. It's when all the secrets come out. But the boy hadn't been dying today, not any more. Your daughter saw to that. What he said can't be blamed on fever. _ I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner. _Lord. Did Timmot really say-

"Mery."

No one calls you that, any more. No one. It's been so long since you've heard it, so long since it's been you, that it's almost a joke. Mery. That was someone who had another life.

You turn and your eyes meet his, pale blue to pale blue, for just a bare second before you find other things to busy you. Stowing the chamomile in a jar, with a few leaves set aside for Prim's tea. Wiping your palms, clammy somehow, on your apron, struggling with the knot in back. Anything to occupy you, so you don't have to answer him.

"Merideth, I." He clears his throat. "I brought some..." He holds out the bag. "Some cookies. I heard the little one was home sick, today. Thought these might cheer her."

As you reach for the bag, he steps in through the doorway, toward you, and your fingers touch. And all at once, in a rush, it is twenty-five years ago. Your hand brushes his and you are a pretty seventeen-year-old girl, solemn and intense but with twinkling merry eyes, picking up a loaf of bread for dinner, and he is a grinning youth, tall and square with that one blonde curl on the side that will never follow the others. That curl begs for your fingers to tuck it back into place, and the boy begs to walk you home from the bakery. Every Saturday since you were twelve.

You remember the heady feeling of having someone completely under your spell. Of knowing that he'd do anything, say anything, sacrifice anything for you. It's the way you're sure the boy on the TV feels about your daughter.

Your daughter...his son. You have the bag and he's stepping back. You snap back to the present, and you're no longer beautiful or in love. That last fact, that loss, hits you in the gut again, and the old, five-year ache of losing him, missing him...Paul...settles under your ribcage. You have one child sick (heartsick, lonely, guilty, suffering), and the other maybe lost forever in the horrible grinding cogs of the Capitol's machine, and you have a husband dead. Never enough food on the table.

And the future is nothing like you imagined it would be, when this man loved you.

"Prim's been taking all of this awful hard," you manage. "Her sister gone. Prim...relies on her so much." Your throat is sore and your eyes burning, chin trembling.

"Yes," he says. He doesn't look away from you now. "We all have taken it hard. But at least..." He bites his lip. Bites back what he wants to say. Then you see him decide to say it anyway; he shrugs one shoulder, the way he used to, and you can't believe you remember it; you remember him moving in just that way, a thousand times, in the distant past. "At least they're not alone, now. At least they have each other." His gentle voice.

One tear escapes down your cheek, and it seems so natural for him to reach out with one forefinger and catch it, rub the moisture between finger and thumb until it's gone. Like your sorrow never was. You open your mouth, but there are no words. All of this is too familiar, and it makes you dizzy. You have to find words.

You turn away and open a cabinet and reach up to find a plate for the cookies. You empty the little bag onto the chipped plate, and stare. They are small and delicate sugar cookies, decorated with primroses, white and pink. Perfect frosting flowers. One blossom to a cookie.

How much did this gift cost him? The white flour, the cane sugar, even the powdered sugar you see he's used for the decorating. Enough to feed a Seam family for a week. You are suddenly sure that his wife has no idea he is here, that he has had to hide this gift, slip out to get it to you. It looks like it took him hours, like he labored over this all day, like his tears and sorrows and bitterness at life may be baked into these sweet treasures.

No, not bitterness. Not Timmot Mellark. Not ever. You don't remember him ever being angry, not even about you and Paul Everdeen. When you fell so hard and so fast for Paul that you weren't even sure you were still the same person, afterward. Weren't so sure you wanted to be. The most Timmot ever did was smile sadly, nod his head, shrug one shoulder. Let you go.

He's trying to leave silently, to slip off while your back is turned. No. You start after him, one step, another. "Timmot." He pauses. You surprise yourself by catching at his hand, and there it is, warm and strong, fitting with yours as easily as it did when you were still children. "I...I'm sorry." You're whispering because you can't manage any more of a voice at the moment. _ Sorry I was so young. Sorry I lost my head and my heart. Sorry you had to..._

He shakes his head. "No," he says.

_I'm sorry I didn't love you_. "I never meant to hurt you." The words come out in a rush, slurring, making you sound drunk. This is something you don't talk about. None of you. Ever. The presumed engagement between the two of you, assumed by both families but never official. The dancing around real committment, the tears, the fear...the abrupt and jarring end of everything. Well, apparently he talks about it with his children, when he's sure they won't remember, being so young. _People don't forget what you say, even a five year old wouldn't forget, _you want to tell him. _I never have_. Instead you say, "It wasn't fair of me..."

"Merideth." He's smiling now, but his eyes are shining a little too brightly. "It's life. It happens." He blinks hard once, twice. Lets your hand go.

He walks out the door.

You stop him with your words. Again. _Just let him go. Let the poor man go. _But you can't, not with the loneliness of the house waiting to swallow you up, the warm tea that is cold comfort to a child sick not in body, but in spirit. Wounded.

"Your Peeta...seems like a fine boy," you say. "You must be very proud." Peeta is the child most like his father, in looks, in spirit, and in essential goodness. You and the rest of the country have seen that, plain enough.

Timmot turns to you and grins, and for a second it is the old grin. Then his face clouds over as he remembers this child is lost to him. As yours is lost to you. Taken. Stolen. The look on his face opens your own wound a little wider.

"And your Katniss..." His voice breaks when he says her name. More than one tear is trailing down your face now, and he steps closer again, so that you are facing one another in the doorway. He catches each tear with his fingertips, as he used to do years ago, in the night. When you were afraid. "She's the best of both of you, Mery."

You look away, unable to bear it, to hear him speak of Paul. Of Katniss. The lost ones. "The best of her father, maybe," you say.

"No." His hand cups your cheek, so warm; you lean into it, and he makes you look at him. At his open, honest eyes, at his own tears. At his pain. "The both of you." He lets you go, backs away. Smiles again, looking beyond you, to where your younger daughter sleeps, trying to rid herself of the ache of loss and fear. "The little one...well, she reminds me very much of someone I once knew."

He leaves you with that thought, and another one of his genuine grins, and a plateful of sweet primrose cookies.


End file.
